The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition – an activist group of British Members of Parliament – inquired through Freedom of Information requests about the release of documents, but US law says such requests can be denied to anyone representing a foreign government.

The judge’s decision comes amid fresh reports of US-UK cooperation on the extraordinary rendition – the process whereby the government sends terror suspects off to the custody of authoritarian states to be tortured – with the former Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi.